The piece, which reads like it’s been written by a social work comms team (if the sector actually had one) attempts to examine the issues social media raises for adoptive families.

The article, prejudicial as it is, opens with a description of a young girl’s experience trying to find her own birth mother, when we are told that she chooses to describe her mother as a Disney princess and the social worker in her life (probably one of many given the transient nature of this kind of service), as a snake. The young girl blames the social worker for losing her mother. Predictably, the journalist places all the blame, for what she describes as a disastrous reunion, on the social media site that brought mother and daughter together.

But the journalist is wrong – and here’s why.

When a child is removed from a biological parent, regardless of whether the parent was able to care for their child or not, and often regardless of whether that child ends up in a loving and steady placement (again, the data tells us this does not happen as much as it should), every child needs to know about their personal, and cultural heritage. Social workers are supposed to make up scrap books for adopted children which tell them about their birth parents, but in our experience, many don’t get one and when they do, they are often superficial at best and at worst, fabrications of the truth.

So little attention is given to the fact that adoptive children do not simply start to breathe, live and experience the world upon adoption – they are alive the moment they are born and building memories and experiences which will shape who they are, for the rest of their lives. That our current adoption process is so crude, so short-sighted when it comes to support for these children, is galling in the face of all the scientific evidence and research we now have available to us about child development and how early life experiences impact us well into adulthood.

The piece goes on to blame social media and the part it played in the reunion between mother and daughter for the subsequent deterioration of the girl’s relationship with her adoptive mother, but fails entirely to question whether the adoptive mother’s bond with her daughter was strong and crucially, whether the adoptive mother was given all the information available about the biological parents and so able to fill in the pieces for her daughter and support her in the discovery process.

To the adoptive mother’s credit in this story she realises, after bitter experience, that honesty should have been the best policy all along, and that it may well have prevented her from losing her adoptive daughter entirely. But she is a lone voice, in an article filled with scaremongering spin from the social work and adoption sectors, busy demonising an inanimate object for the deep pain and confusion their flawed processes inflict on already vulnerable children.

If we are ever going to provide meaningful support for children who have suffered neglect and abuse, we are going to have to wake up to the realisation that their lives, like the rest of us, begin when they’re born. That they need to know how they came into the world, and who their birth parents are, and most importantly perhaps, have access to these parents in an appropriate and structured way, so that they and they alone can make the decision about whether their parents should be in their lives or not. And whilst this idea burns at the heart of the adoption industry – an arrangement that would put off most adoptive parents and see the industry, and its profit margins, shrink overnight – it is the only way forward.

Social media is not the enemy within the adoption process – it is just offering us a warning sign that the system is riddled with problems, and in desperate need of reform.

All is not lost ,you have to try and find your adopted children.No law stops you plastering their photos when small with brief stories all over the internet,under facebook,twitter,Genes united,friends united, and other similar sites.They may even be looking for you right now !

Here are two success stories ;- 1:- Winona Varney and her sister Danielle in which I was very much involved who I helped to happily reunite with their birth mother, and 2:- Von and Tammy who look more like sisters than mother and daughter and were happily reunited for good once they found each other.

Natasha, from my own experience I know social workers are terrified of social media not just for adoptive kids but also if your kids are in foster care. If your child is in foster care the social workers demand you sign a form to say you will not put photos of your children on social media sites or you will not get photos of your child. Edward Timpson knows this illegal practice goes on but condones it. I know he knows because I wrote to him to tell him!

This practice also illustrates how the law is bent for social workers to do what they want, so long as they say it’s in the best interests of the child. The fact is it isn’t! Research has shown a child’s (in care) mental health is better when they can see their parents and extended family. So what is Edward Timpson doing about it? Nothing! So much for the off touted, ” in a child’s best interests!”

Adoption should not be practiced. It should be outlawed! What more research is needed to show adoption does not work for the child and is often a legal conduit for child trafficking! We also know taking a child into care doesn’t work either! Care givers abuse the children they are supposed to protect! Kids really are better off at home!

Having said that, there are some truly disturbed people who will seriously harm and even kill their own children. There are those outsiders who come into the family home who will take advantage and a child will suffer. Those are situations that may never ever be avoided, no matter what steps are taken to prevent such an event taking place. It may be you can only punish the perpetrators by locking them up in prison or sectioning them to a mental facility after such a tragedy is committed.

What is unconscionable is when social workers then manipulate public thinking with newspaper articles, citing cases similar to Baby P. They state this is why they are justified taking kids into care. What they play down is their involvement, (or should that be lack of involvement?), that often leads to the death of a child. Parents have killed their own children and themselves after social workers implied they would take away their children!

Social media can be manipulated as was done recently by MP’s deleting scandal and expenses fraud from Wikipedia before the election. Utube failed to put up some of UKIP election videos until after the election too, they are just filtering through now. IP addresses are a dead give away! It can also make people aware of what is going on and alert people to what is being played out right under their noses! Who would have thought that over 200 mothers have been sent to prison for speaking out about what has happened to them and their children in family court to shut them up? Who would have known over 100,000 kids are currently in care in the UK? Who would have known……….without social media!

The hyperbole used by social workers is not confined to taking kids into care but the government uses every trick in the book to generate more adoptive parents by offering them financial incentives and playing on their need to have a child and promoting how wonderful they are as they would be giving a child a better chance in life, a better life than being in care! Well research has pounded that theory into the ground! Kids are not better off adopted but the government doesn’t want you, the prospective adopter, to know that ever so minor flaw!

It also appears we have two grades of “a better life” for kids in care, according to social workers. The say the first is foster care but even better than that is adoption! However they are lying to everyone! They have nothing to back up that theory! Both are inferior!

I want to know when we can hold those people, the MPs who make these laws & policies, to account? The Judges who carry them out? They are deliberatly putting more children at greater risk, than if they were just left at home. There is no excuse! They are now aware of the research that flies in the face of what they are doing for decades so they should change what they promote. That would really be in the best interests of the child!

if children in the care system had better lives, why then are they 6-7 times more likely to be abused there than at home? Clearly state care is a failure.
When one talks to social workers, solicitors etc and feels the NO FEELINGS in most of them that we understand that children for them are mere commodities £££….little beings to be HANDLED…..and silenced and traumatised over and over.

But it is only in learning the real law re the birth cert that we can really know truth.Always follow the money.

“they are alive the moment they are born and building memories and experiences which will shape who they are, for the rest of their lives.”
These children are alive in their mother’s wombs and sense everything around them. Anyone who does not realise this should read Dr Janov as he describes it better than anyone.
The human child is only deemed alive in law – a live berth/birth cert- under maritime law. The mother is deemed a mere vessel/breeder. Once berthed through the waters of the mother and registered, the child is bonded and is owned by the state- because parents have handed the child over.
So like any case where the child has no berth/birth cert social workers cannot take them.
As for social media, any adoptee I ever met was looking for their natural mother- Natural mothers do not like to be referred to as Berth/Birth mothers as that is demeaning to their creations.
The longing for adoptees for their natural mothers is natural and normal.
The berth mother label reduced mothers to mere breeders.
Since The Baby Thief, social workers live in fear of adopted children finding their natural mothers, lest certain truths are revealed. That is the fear.
The adopted children are fed so many untruths and shudder the thought that adopted children and adopters might learn these.
We must mention here- Forced Adoption and others are aware- the children adopted with no care order and no paper trail. How will these children find their natual parents?
That is where experts are proven wrong many times.
Like one adopted child found his mother in a park-and he had not seen her since he was 12 months old…..yet he sensed her and knew her- but she could not pretend she knew him as she felt she would be arrested- again. This boy told the adopter that he wanted to go home with that lady- his natural mother. In this case there has been no contact, no pictures,no memory box because the child does not exist on paper- only to his adopters – who are most likely clueless that they have adopted a child with a refused care order in place.
How many more cases like this?
Its like a history from Ireland etc where the children simply disappared on paper and so much pain now with adoptees and natural parents seeking each other.

Steve Jobs said it well re being adopted and the emotional feelings involved which never go away and lead to illness.
Forced adoption research from 1950’s revealed the dark side of adoption but the profit was and is too great to stop it now.
Even with adoption syndrome proof etc, the media never ever reveal the dark side of adoption.
No one hears of the children sold from Ireland to UK with the blessings of social workers. Imagine getting your file and reading that you were sold to a British couple for £200 40 years ago – no more than a calf.
These are the people whose voices need to be heard.

http://adopteeidentityrites.com/resources/known-consequences-of-separating-mother-and-child/
Adoption was a social experiment in which babies born to unmarried mothers were taken at birth and given to strangers for adoption. It was claimed to be in the best interests of the child, who would be protected from the slur of illegitimacy and would have a better life in the adoptive family. Adoption enabled infertile married couples to have a family, and the State saved money on its welfare bill.”
There were reports in 1953 that adopted children manifested severe pathology including a preponderance of impulsive behavior, with characteristic ‘acting out’, both sexual and aggressive. (Eiduson and Livermore, 1953). Overt aggression and sexual acting out were also noted by Schechter who claimed, in 1964, that there was substantial evidence from many sources that the nonrelative adopted child may be more prone to emotional difficulties. In adopted adults he found more alcoholism, sexual acting out, and more suicide attempts”

“Adopted Child Syndrome has been a successful defense in saving some adopted killers from the Death Penalty — a theory supported by many famed psychologists, although not endorsed by the psychiatric community associations as a whole. Adopted Child Syndrome was first studied in 1953 by Jean Paton, an adoptee and social worker, and also decades later when psychologist, David Kirschner, coined the term “Adopted Child Syndrome” as underlying “Dissociative Disorder,” in his paper, “Son of Sam and the Adopted Child Syndrome,” (Adelphi Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Newsletter, 1978) in which the adoptee reacts to emotional abuse of adoption with identified anti-social behaviors at various times, often not apparent from media reports, many of them being similar reactions to physical or sexual abuse.

No one wants to talk about adoptees who have obvious negative outcomes, including adopted serial killers such as David Berkowitz and Ted Bundy, nor the fact that even apparently successful adoptees have abandonment and rejection issues over being adopted — such as the late entrepeneur-founder of Apple Computer, STEVE JOBS, who is quoted as similarly expressing “unresolved pain” stemming from being adopted. Both famous and infamous adoptes at times demonstrate anti-social behaviors, as detailed in “CHOSEN CHILDREN,” which documents the changing psychiatric theories and labels pinned on adoptees to attempt to explain away their problems as being caused by them and which have often resulted in dangerous treatments — such as “Attachment/Holding Therapy, and “Re-Birthing Therapy” that have even killed them, as documented in the largest collection of “Adopters Who Abused and Killed Adoptees” with sources. “

Just read the article on Natasha’s twitter flicker from All Aboard the Trauma Train.

I also read the social worker comments about adoption when it’s admitted that one is giving a traumatised child (dealing with loss) to a traumatised family dealing with their loss……! I would add that child doesn’t have a say in the matter.

No one bothers with the long term effects of being in care or adoption. The outcomes are too far in the future for anyone making the original decisions to worry about.

The adoption and foster care world needs to accept new expectations. The old method of closing adoptions by sealing the birth records and denying identifying information till age 18, and fake life stories doesn’t have the same degree of preventing contact between birth relatives and child that it once did. Social media is here to stay, and yes foster and adopted children will use it.

What has to change in the adoption and foster care world is a shift towards 100% honesty at a younger age. Foster and adopted children will need to know their life story, and the real reasons they were taken away at a younger age. Covering up the truth will be a thing of the past. With social media, you cannot safely tell a child a birth parent was a nice person when they were in fact a criminal.

The next role is that the child will have a significant say in the contact arrangements he/she wants with birth relatives. The days of rubber stamping “letterbox contact till age 18” are essentially over. Agreements that promise or guarantee cutting off contact till adulthood should not be made anymore.

Yes, you can cut off a child’s contact with birth relatives partially in their younger years but this amount of adult control will wane with the following:

* A child’s ability to remember identifying or contact information for birth relatives (remember a child’s memory is not erased when moving a child to a new family).

* A child’s level of computer and technical knowledge.

* A child’s desire to search for missing or hidden birth relatives or siblings

* A child’s level of rebelliousness.

So what should the new model be:

* Social workers should cut off contact with as few relatives as possible. Relatives that did not hurt or cause harm to the child should not be severed.

* Give the child the accurate version of their life story, explained at an age appropriate level. How you explain a bad situation such as criminal activity, divorce, parent unable to provide care, etc to a 4 year old is going to be different from a 8 year old, from a 12 year old, and so on.

* Provide support if the child wants to re-establish a birth relative relationship.

* Take a case by case approach when a child takes it into their own hands and makes unauthorized contact.

* Do not guarantee cut-off of contact till age 18.

* Prosecute only when abuse, neglect, etc are made

* accept that some children will take it into their own hands and contact their birth relatives.

The Guardain article is based on the worst cases were inadequate parenting actually caused harm. However in the ‘child snatching’ UK reality 85% of cases are ‘trumped up’ and unjustified.

I just read a post of a distraught parent to an advocate:

‘I suffered immensely at the hands of in the Court of Appeal. The Article by is CORRECT and ACCURATE. The lower Court was rigged with collusion, blunders and fabrication and just told us to get lost. We had no choice but, to pursue Justice to Strasbourg Jurisprudence. They took my son and WE HAVE NOT SEEN NOR HEARD FROM HIM FOR OVER 2 YEARS NOW AND WE NEVER WILL AGAIN. ALL PURPOSELY DEEPLY FLAWED.’

The worst excess of ‘creating a storybook’ I heard of was along the following lines:

A single mother had escaped lifelong verbal, emotional, physical and sexual absue by her (seemingly ‘Satanist’) parents.

The ultra-violent grandfather seemingly killed the boy’s godmother running her over ‘ druggin her and then burning down her cottage to pave the way for a 6 months stalking, intimidation and defamation campaign which culminated in a day time rape of the toddler in a Cul-de-Sac.

A clandestine police operation had coerced the mother to delay reporting for 1 month – ostensibly to facilitate an undercover operation to snare the wider abuse ring.

So it appears to be the case that compromised police ‘aided and abetted’ toddler rape as well as ‘child trafficking’ through ‘Forced Adoption’.

Note that abusive Satanists routinely have sex in front of other members of the group as part of their bizarre rituals (often outdoors in forests or castle grounds e.g. google ‘Edward Heath Cult Funeral’). While this is ‘legal’ for consenting adults it of course is a breeding ground for over-stepping the mark and abusing children.

The ‘double-bind’ set up worked and the cabal of police, social workers, medics, psychiatrists and psychologists kicked in claiming that the mother was ‘delusional’.

Even before the 4th and final assessment was done by a Clinical Psychologist the SS had the ‘barmy’ idea to permit the alleged assailant and his accomplice to interact in supervised contact with the alleged toddler rape victim – without asking the mother for permission.

In the next contact session with his mother the boy’s legs reportedly were shaking and he gesticulated that pictures had been taken of him (how handy to later get associates to identify the target boy for ‘adoption’ and future access). Only when confronted by the mother did the SS admit they had arranged the contact behind her back.

‘We wanted to take pictures for the story book and wanted him to know that he had been loved’ – by the grandparents who made hell out of the mother’s first 20 years.

The grandparents had only seen the boy during a six weeks stay 20 months earlier when he was just 12 months old!

If the mother was mentally ill – why torture her with such an experience? To drive her over the edge? To make her fit the false diagnosis?

Unfortunately it is the Authority Representatives who were ‘delusional’!

Various artefacts were found at the burnt out cottage of the boy’s godmother suggesting arson murder.

Here are some more guidelines for parents and social workers that if a foster or adopted child under 18 has taken it into their own hands to re-establish a birth parent or sibling relationship:

* Do not panic

* Remember that if “identifying information” is now in a child’s long term memory, it cannot be erased, so don’t count on getting secret surname anonymity back real easily, if ever. It is not worth trying. The same is true with any phone numbers, e-mail addresses, or mailing or home addresses that may have been exchanged.

* If a child hasn’t been told their “life story” and the real reason they have been taken away when you discover they have made contact with birth family members, do so now at an age appropriate vocabulary.

* Offer to help them develop their new relationship and encourage sharing dialogue of what is going on. This way if there are any issues or things aren’t going well, they have adult support.

* If they decide to meet in person, offer to meet in a public place with adult supervision, especially higher risk relatives. It is harder to get away with assault or other crimes in broad daylight in a public space (like a restaurant or coffee shop), when it is busy and there are lots of witnesses.

* The child should know how to block someone online if a relationship is going bad.

* Keep in mind once you share something online, it is not possible to take the information back.

* Use of geo-tagging in photos online, may increase the chance that a location of a birth relative or the child could be found easier.

* Online contact is instant, you need to realize that you will not have counseling or a confidential intermediary service, like the typical adult reunion method. The child will have to decide for themselves whether a reunion is safe and accept the luck of the draw.

* There is no way to force messages go to go through the parents or CPS first when it comes to a child’s use of social media.

The usual delusional characters who are enthusiasts for Forced Adoption are quoted. It is claimed only extreme cases are Forced Adopted, which is not true. Also the forced adoptiers should be fully told about the child’s background.

But this will never happen since there is a “Narrative” justifying the social workers , their actions and salving their consciences.

I came across this post when looking for information about how to get some images of our adopted son removed from social media. This is a rather odd post, seemingly written by an academic with little ‘front-line’ experience. A lot of the comments below are even odder with only Stephen Hinkle sounding remotely sane. Most adoptions within the UK are done by social services, not ‘an industry’. There is no money made on it, quite the opposite, we pay via our taxes (and like all public services are seriously underfunded). How on Earth can adoption be described as ‘forced’? Social services prefer either long-term foster care or special guardianship in order to keep the child in touch with their birth-parents. Before that they spend ridiculous amounts of time and money trying to support the families, with early intervention teams, school support, regular health checks, parenting training, and so on. Adoption is the last resort, only if the child is in serious danger (and correspondingly seriously damaged and afraid of the birth parents).

As an adopter you are the child’s new parent, and you have to keep them safe, something the birth-parents obviously failed to do. It is patronising to claim that the parents are also traumatised by loss, many if not most already have children of their own or have decided not to have birth children (for their own reasons) and are simply wanting to help a child in need – in fact social services prioritise such families over couples who have tried to conceive but failed. You don’t lie to the child about their life, in any case their own memories, court records and medical records will tell them all they need to know, so you would be found out if you lied. We still write letters and send Christmas cards to the birth family, albeit via anonymous ‘letterbox’ contact. So far we’ve never had one back. All my son (or anyone else) has to do is Google his rather unique birthname and he will find humiliating videos and pictures posted by his birth-mum on the first page and bring back the memories that used to gave him screaming nightmares. Why should he have to face that every day?

It seems to most adoptors (and there really aren’t that many – only a few hundred a year in the UK) that most birth-parents who have their children taken away are in serious denial about why it has happened, and it is us who have to deal with the consequences.

As to getting images removed from social media, it is going to be difficult. The rule is once something is put online, it is out there for good. However, there are some remedies one can sometimes try but there are no guarantees that rhey will last, especially if someone has already copied them to their local hard drive and decides to reupload them on a different site.

1) if it is your own profile or your child’s, login and delete the photos.

2) if it is on another persons profile, try reporting them to the online service or social media company it is on that your child’s picture was there without consent.

3) If you own the photo (as in own the copyright to it), you can try sending a DMCA takedown notice to the online service.

4) You can try contacting your child’s social worker or post adoption support and see if they can help with this but to really get things taken down you will have to go to the online service or social media company that the photo is on directly. The adoption agencies or social services do not own nor have direct access to the online or social media services servers, nor can they delete content on them unless it is their own account.

5) Beyond that you may have to go through the court system or law enforcement and get an injunction to force the online service or social media company to take down the photo on someone else’s account.

6) Please note that any copies of the photo already stored offline on someone’s personal computer, tablet, digital camera, or smart phone cannot be erased without physically having access to the device itself. This is also true of any identifying information (like looks, new surnames, phone numbers, or addresses) that is stored on a computer or phone if is now in the person’s long term memory. Any stored information or photos could be reuploaded onto a different website at any later date. To erase a device that someone else owns would require an injunction and likely a search warrant.